Saturday, June 21, 2014

Benton Harbor Voter Suppression, Mississippi Style

Mississippi 1964  

Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney had only just begun 
working on the Freedom Summer campaign to register black Mississippi to vote
when they suddenly disappeared.

Schwerner and Goodman were two Jewish men from New York who had been 
there less than a week and Chaney was a local black activist. They had just 
finished investigating the bombing of a nearby church when they were taken into custody under false pretenses and never again seen by their fellow 
volunteers.

The disappearance of these three men sparked national outrage, and the FBI
converged on Mississippi to investigate. They discovered that on June 21, 1964,
immediately upon being released from custody, the young activists had been 
brutally beaten and murdered by a Ku Klux Klan lynch mob.  The FBI's 
investigation led to the first successful prosecution of a civil rights case in 
Mississippi.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the day we lost these brave defenders of
civil rights.

Today in the city of Benton Harbor, Michigan, 50 years later, we still fight for voter rights.  We are under voter suppression today in Benton Harbor.
   

Rev Edward Pinkney

Burn Baby Burn
Burn all NAACP Membership Cards